I realized a long time ago that my website was looking a little dated. A dark theme, drab colours and not exactly mobile-friendly. So when I started fulltime in December, one of the first things I did was a major styling overhaul. Another problem with the old site was that...
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Happy new year, dear readers! This post has nothing to do with new year’s resolutions; it just happens to coincide. Studies have shown that setting and announcing explicit goals helps drive success. And who would I be to argue with science? So here’s what I’m planning to do in the...
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So I’ve been a fulltime indie for about a week now. I launched Rocket Mail for Android. More about that in a later post. So what’s next? Next is a better version of my last Ludum Dare entry, Glauron. I sent that version to an HTML5 games portal (GamePix), where...
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Put your spatial insight and worldly knowledge to the test! Rocket Mail is a company that delivers packages to anywhere in the world – by rocket! Use your phone’s compass and accelerometer to launch your delivery rocket to cities throughout the world. The closer you get, the higher your score!...
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I recently did an interview with Robert of Tornadic Dev Studio from Melbourne, Australia. He noticed my recent announcement about starting as a fulltime indie developer, and got inspired: New Years Resolutions are a joke because I believe each day is an opportunity to make a resolution, change something, act...
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At the core, Rocket Mail is a very simple game. I made the early prototype (Doomsray) in less than a day. There are no complicated physics, no advanced graphics, and very little in the way of performance requirements. Of course there’s a long way to go from a prototype to...
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After thinking this through over and over and over again, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge, quit my day job and become a fulltime indie game developer! Some of you may know that I have done this before. And that it was not very successful, ending in my running...
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Just a short post to share something I’ve been working on that mightily pleases the Kerbal Space Program player in me. In testing Orbital Express, it became clear that having three controls (compass direction, inclination, and launch speed) is too much for beginning players. So I decided to simplify the...
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Virtual reality seems to be all the rage in gaming these days. Everyone seems to be buying into it. Big corporations like Facebook (Oculus Rift), Sony (PlayStation VR) and Microsoft (HoloLens) are pouring money into VR as if it’ll be the biggest thing since sliced bread. But right now, few...
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As I’d hoped, my 48-hour game Glauron did pretty well in the latest Ludum Dare game development competition: it ranked #58 overall, and made the top-100 in the graphics and fun categories as well. That’s very nice and flattering, but I think there is more potential here. In fact, I...
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For my game Orbital Express, I need a list of cities that can serve as targets for the player to aim at. We’re trying to select cities that… … are somewhat uniformly spread across the globe. That way, you won’t end up always having to aim for the same densely...
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After Ludum Dare, it’s back to working on the game I blogged about last week. Name clashes notwithstanding, I’ve decided to call it Orbital Express after all. As I mentioned, there is work to be done on progression, balancing and scoring. Current state Currently, the core game loop works as...
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(Cross-posted to the Ludum Dare blog.) This is Glauron, my Compo entry for Ludum Dare 33, themed You Are The Monster: This was my eighth time participating in Ludum Dare, and I feel it’s my best yet. I’m very happy with what I got done, and there was even time...
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I’ve been working on and off on this project for almost two months now, so it’s time I blogged something about it. Here’s the elevator pitch: Ballistic Delivery Service is a wacky party game that puts your spatial insight and topographical knowledge to the test! When conventional delivery companies aren’t...
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Each field of programming presents its own challenges, and game programming is no exception. In fact, I would say that a game is among the hardest things you can program in general. Why? I can think of three main reasons, which are closely related, as we will see. 1. Performance...
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After a weekend of toil with GRPC, ProGuard, dex, Netty, Maven, Gradle and IntelliJ, I finally managed to build a release APK of the first public version of the Bigcanvas app. Add some screenshots (inspired by – well, hopefully you can tell), and we have a publication! I made the...
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Pickomino (known as Regenwormen in Dutch, Heckmeck in German) is a dice game in which players try to get as many worms as possible. It is largely a game of chance, but there are some tactics involved, which always leaves me wondering: did I make the optimal choice? Only one...
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Core to the idea of Bigcanvas is that it’s a shared space, where everyone can draw at the same time. Much as it would on a real canvas, this means people can interfere with each other. Properly handling this and making sure that everybody’s brush strokes made it onto the...
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How does one store the contents of an infinite canvas into a computer’s finite memory? One cheats. In this case, by taking advantage of the fact that the canvas may be infinite, but people’s drawings are quite finite. We simply don’t store the empty regions. To that end, the canvas...
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Remember Bigcanvas? The infinite online canvas that anyone can draw on, which I launched in 2013? I didn’t do anything with it since, but the idea has always been at the back of my mind, biding its time. The most fun games for me are always those which give you...
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